J.B. Rhine, writing in 1937, describes his efforts to validate the existence of precognition as distinct from clairvoyance, telepathy, and psychokinesis, all of which he had already identified (Rhine, 1937). In contrast, we are setting out to start with precognition, and reframe all four (and their derivatives) as expressions of precognition only. The objective is to use Occam’s razor and give precedence to simplicity. Time is now better understood than in 1937 (Price, 1996), and the concept of retrocausality (Sheehan, 2011; Price, 1996), and the idea of information filtering back in time, are regularly addressed. Precognition therefore seems to have a mechanism (Oreshkov et al., 2012; Olson, 2011; Radin, 2006a; Sheehan, 2015; Radin, 2006b), while the others still do not. We also propose that the whole phenomenon is not “out there”, but instead, within each of us – and nowhere else.

In making decisions that are important to us, we are sporadically guided by information that comes exclusively from our future selves.

Precognition is All There Is. We are choosing to start with this assumption, follow it through to see how much of ESP can be explained, and see what the consequences are.

• Psychokinesis is re-framed as the experimenter being precognitively informed by the future joy of his own success, to make the right decisions to get results he wants. By implication there is no psychokinetic, forcing field emanating from his mind, causing mind-over-matter effects, (May et al., 1995).

• Telepathy is reframed as precognition, because telepathy experiments frequently allow the participants and experimenters to discuss the results after the tests, and it is from this future revelation that the participants, in the past, can use precognition to guide themselves to the results they want. Added to this, telepathy has targeting issues, (Beloff, 1970) that the reframed ESP model overcomes.

• Clairvoyance and remote viewing can be reframed as precognition for the same reasons – they both have opportunities for the participants to see the results in the future, from where their past decisions are guided.

Psi experiments over vast distances, from space (Mitchell, 1971), or deep in mines or under the sea are all successful, not because ESP travels over vast distances or deep underground, but only because the experimenters and participants learn about the results after the fact, from where information is picked up precognitively and used, before and during the experiments, to get the results they want. In May’s words they become “statistical opportunists” (May et al., 1995).

Precognition only gets information from the future self. Another assumption is that there is only one source. The only place precognitively-acquired information comes from is the future self. We do not receive information telepathically from other people. There is no psychic ability to scan the world or other people’s minds to get information, as is sometimes suggested (Radin, 2006b). Precognitively acquired information does not transmit by some field or resonance or any other exotic method, (May et al., 1995).

Instead, we propose, important information stays in our own mind, within our own world line, in our own “future memory”, from where a small fraction of it can be detected in the past and contribute to a decision being made there. This hypothesized process is the core of the reframed-ESP model.

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Published on August 31, 2023